Coletta Youngers

Ms. Youngers is a Senior Fellow and consultant with WOLA’s drug policy reform project, which promotes more effective and humane drug policies through dialogue and up-to-date analysis of developments in the region. She is the lead coordinator of a project on women, drug policy and incarceration and also participates on behalf of WOLA in the Research Consortium on Drugs and the Law (CEDD). Ms. Youngers has also helped coordinate a series of informal drug policy dialogues bringing together officials, academics legal experts and others to discuss ways to effectively move beyond the failed “war on drugs.” In addition to her work at WOLA, she is a Senior Fellow with the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC).

Coletta Youngers is a leading expert on international drug control policy and drug policy related developments in Latin America. She has over thirty years of experience working on human rights and political developments in the Andean Region and U.S. foreign policy toward the Andes.

Ms. Youngers is co-editor of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The Impact of U.S. Policy (2004), which was described in the Journal of Politics as, “a well-researched project that cogently discusses the international and domestic contexts and provides a comprehensive and reasoned account of problems in current U.S. drug policy.” Also published in Spanish, the book continues to be widely quoted in current research and is used by university professors across the country. She is also the author of the books, Violencia Política y Sociedad Civil en el Perú (2003) on the Peruvian human rights movement, and Thirty Years of Advocacy for Human Rights, Democracy and Social Justice (2006), on the history of WOLA.

Ms. Youngers has published extensively and is frequently interviewed by English language and Spanish media, including articles or appearances in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNN-Spanish, CBS-Spanish, NBC-Telenoticias, ECO-Televisa, and Univision.

She joined the staff of WOLA in 1987, specializing in human rights, democracy and U.S. policy toward Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. Prior to joining WOLA, Ms. Youngers was a project manager at Catholic Relief Services and on the editorial staff of Latinamerica Press/Noticias Aliadas, both in Lima, Peru.